A new generation of stores of Wal Mart appeared, and the optimization, upgrading and reshaping of business types have become the focus of supermarket development in recent years.
On December 24, Wal Mart China announced that the new generation stores Kunming Longquan Store and Zhengda Store were opened on December 25 and 27. According to surging journalists, in recent years, Wal Mart is accelerating its transformation and upgrading and reshaping Wal Mart's business.
"The new generation of stores is a concentrated reflection of our transformation strategy. We see that a large number of customer needs have not been met, which is also the direction of our future efforts, and we will accelerate innovation and iteration." Zhu Jun, chief procurement officer of Wal Mart stores, said in an interview with media including surging news that Wal Mart's transformation strategy is very clear, and will continue to focus on customer needs, create a stable quality price ratio, accelerate the investment and transformation of stores, and improve the convenience of omni channel shopping.
Wal Mart entered the Chinese market in 1996 and opened its first store in Shenzhen. At present, Wal Mart operates a variety of businesses in China, mainly including Wal Mart stores and Sam's Club. There are hundreds of Wal Mart stores and more than 50 Sam's Club stores.
Wal Mart invests heavily in store construction instead of sticking to the format of hypermarket
Since the beginning of this year, many domestic supermarkets and stores have started to adjust and optimize, explore new tracks, accelerate transformation and optimize stores, and many are still in the investment period of reform and transformation.
"My team and I always focus on customers, but we don't pay much attention to the 'transformation year'. We have our own focus on people and clear strategies in steady and continuous progress." In this interview, Zhu Jun said that after more than three years of transformation and polishing, Wal Mart has made great changes and become more focused on core people. We will continue to redefine Wal Mart from the perspective of customers, not stick to the format of hypermarkets, consolidate trust, restart growth, and reshape the Wal Mart brand.
Under the background of general pressure on domestic supermarkets and stores, Wal Mart China has maintained its leading performance. On January 17 this year, Wal Mart China officially announced that the first batch of 29 hypermarkets in eight cities in China had been upgraded, and Wal Mart hypermarkets had achieved significant market share growth for 10 consecutive quarters. According to the results of the third fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2025 released by Wal Mart as of October 25, 2024, the global performance exceeded market expectations, and the guidance for fiscal year 2025 was raised. Focusing on the Chinese market, Wal Mart's net sales in China were $4.9 billion, up 17% year on year, comparable sales up 15%, and e-commerce business net sales up 25%. The offline comparable foot traffic of Sam's Club and hypermarkets continues to grow. Driven by sales growth and continuous efforts to create product differentiation and efficient operations, the overall gross profit margin increased in the third quarter, operating rates decreased, and operating profits increased.
In order to give customers a better shopping experience, Wal Mart is investing heavily in store construction. Previously, the management of Wal Mart China has repeatedly stressed that "customer first" is the unchanged strategic origin on the road of transformation, and Wal Mart aims to "become the most trusted omni channel retailer in China".
"We don't have a discount target. We respond to what customers need based on the characteristics of the crowd." Zhu Jun said that the prices of Wal Mart stores are already competitive in the market, and retailers may stop there. But if we still feel expensive from the perspective of customers, we will continue to look for opportunities for cost optimization.
Zhu Jun further introduced that at present, Wal Mart has no promotional coupons on its small programs, giving customers simple, direct and stable parity. In addition, taking the self owned brand Wojixian Baking as an example, by streamlining SKUs, concentrating resources to create large orders, reducing costs, and significantly improving efficiency, the quality is benchmarked against professional baking shops, while the price is only half, and the sales of baking categories have maintained double-digit growth year after year. Another snack category with deep penetration of "daily parity", Wal Mart significantly reduced bulk products, and further streamlined homogeneous products and price bands.
Can accelerating omnichannel layout save supermarket retail?
According to the reporter, at present, Wal Mart has built a three-dimensional omni channel matrix with online and offline integration, multiple scenes, multiple distribution ranges and timeliness, and the public and private domains are developing in parallel. It is worth noting that Wal Mart's e-commerce business accounts for nearly half.
In terms of physical stores, Zhu Jun said that Wal Mart should continue to upgrade more stores in the future, and should change everything. Wal Mart focuses on the crowd to promote transformation, not sticking to the shape and size of stores. The size and location of a store are not the standard, customer needs are the standard. In terms of omni channel development, Wal Mart China recently announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Meituan in terms of real-time distribution, commodity richness, commodity operation, digital customer capability and digital marketing. At present, Wal Mart stores across the country have been fully online and connected to Meituan for distribution.
"Wal Mart continues to expand its omni channel layout to help more customers enjoy the convenient shopping experience of multiple scenes, diversification and multi touch points." Zhu Jun introduced that this year Wal Mart lowered the delivery threshold, upgraded the performance efficiency and scope again, improved the "fast delivery" business from the original one hour delivery to the "fastest 30 minutes delivery", encrypted the "punctual delivery" site layout, expanded the customer service range to 5 to 15 kilometers of stores, and the delivery efficiency was 2 to 3 hours.
Accelerating omnichannel transformation is an important strategic measure for the transformation of the retail industry.
In terms of top domestic supermarkets, on December 25th, Cainiao Express announced that it will continue to deepen its cooperation with RT Mart in same city delivery. Currently, it provides half day local delivery services to RT Mart Youxian users in 41 cities across the country, expanding the delivery radius to up to 20 kilometers away from the store. Compared with the overseas delivery model, after connecting to Cainiao Express's same city delivery network, the variety of products that can be delivered has also been greatly increased.
Yonghui Supermarket is also continuing to promote the large-scale development of online to home business. At present, it has launched online services in 443 cities, districts and counties across the country. In terms of channel laying, in addition to the "Yonghui Life APP" to provide a full range of performance supply services of "the fastest 30 minute delivery in the same city", it has carried out in-depth cooperation with third-party channel platforms such as Meituan, Jingdong, Hungleme, Taoxianda, Tiktok, etc. for many years to expand the service radius of Yonghui single store, and has realized 24-hour business in some regions. The management of Metro AG China has also disclosed that Metro AG's online performance, especially the home service, is also growing at a faster speed, thanks to the substantial increase in the timeliness of transportation, and the simultaneous upgrading of after-sales mechanism.
Senior chain industry expert Wen Zhihong previously told reporters from The Paper that for traditional supermarkets, the main theme for the future is to continue exploring transformation, but not necessarily any one path will succeed. In the general direction, on the one hand, we can consider omnichannel and online offline integration; Next is the transformation of business formats, such as membership stores, community fresh retail, discount stores, etc; Thirdly, we can explore the differentiation of our own brands.